Yesterday morning I went off on the Wolves front office for their trade of OJ Mayo for Kevin Love. Normally I try to keep what I write on the front page from being overly harsh and save my "off the cuff" remarks for the forum. However, somewhere in the seismic shift between my Thursday night elation and my Friday morning stomach punch, I lost my cool and made a post out of anger without looking at all the angles. After taking a day to put the whole picture in perspective, I definitely owe Kevin McHale and Fred Hoiberg an apology for publicly ripping them a new one and heralding this trade as potentially the "dumbest move in Timberwolves history". Don’t get me wrong, this very well may end up being the dumbest trade in Timberwolves history if OJ Mayo becomes a superstar, and I’m not convinced that I’d have made the trade myself, but to automatically label it that was was extremely premature. The final verdict on this deal won’t be made for at least another two years, and anyone passing judgement a moment before then is claiming to be a psychic.
My main objection to the trade was that I felt OJ Mayo’s ceiling was
far higher than Kevin Love, as even Glen Taylor as attested. You don’t
win in the NBA by hitting seven straight singles, you win by hitting a
grand slam. After finishing third to last this past season, the
Timberwolves are more in need of a bases-clearing hit than perhaps any
team. Plain and simple, Mike Miller and Kevin Love aren’t going to help
Al Jefferson hoist a trophy without other MAJOR additions. If OJ Mayo
is who I think he is, the combo of him and Big Al could have been
Stockton and Malone-esque. With an additional move here or there, the
Wolves could have been firmly in contention a couple of years down the
road. Of course all of these "possibilities" are meaningless now and
it’s pointless to talk about what might’ve been. However, if five
years from now OJ is lighting it up in the NBA, there’s going to be an
army of disguntled Wolves fans cursing McHale’s name.
On the
flip side, there’s no guarantee that OJ will actually match the hype
surrouding him. Still I feel comfortable saying that he’ll be a solid
player at worst and probably a better pro than Love. Spot-on shooters
with solid defense don’t come around all that often, so letting OJ go
before he even stepped foot on an NBA court was extremely risky. Maybe
at the end of the day the Wolves pulled in two good players for the
price of one, but Memphis probably got the best player in the trade. In
a league where a single person can make the difference between a team
going for a title or ping pong balls, that’s always a good situation to
be in. I certainly don’t understand the people who are crucifying the
Grizzlies for this deal. The Wolves almost certainly won’t have a
tandem as good as Gay and Mayo this upcoming season.
All I knew
about the remaining players in the deal was that Brian Cardinal still
had an atrocious contract, which partially off-set the benefits of
ditching Marko’s deal. I also cringed at the fact that we’d lost
Antoine’s expiring contract and, with it, any chance of swinging a
deadline deal or signing a good free-agents next summer. At first
glance, the Timberwolves looked like a one-man-team with slightly
better role players and less flexibility to make moves in the
short-term. That was the logic that lead me to go off on the Wolves
front
office. At six o’clock in the morning, that was about as in-depth as I
could get into the deal.
However, after I finally got the time
to scrutinze all the new contracts we acquired, I realized something
phenomenal. Other than Big Al, there’s not a single player on this
team locked up beyond the 2009-10 season. That means that when an
astounding group of free agents (Think LeBron, Tim Duncan, Amare
Stoudamire, Joe Johnson, Chris Bosh, Deron Williams, Chris Paul, Tracy
McGrady, Michael Redd, the list goes on…) come due in 2010, the
Wolves could be ridiculously under the cap and able to buy themselves
some top-shelf talent. It’s true that Walker would have given us some
cap space this upcoming summer, but the 2009 crop of free-agents pale
in comparison to those names I just rattled off. It can also be argued
that the Wolves could have avoided this two year wait by just keeping
OJ Mayo and hoping that he’d turn into the superstar we’re hoping to
buy, but even the most adamant supporters of OJ, like myself, have to
admit that there’s no guarantee he’ll reach that level. What can be
guaranteed is that if the Wolves have 20 million plus to offer a
free-agent, there’s going to be somebody in that pool who’s going to be
willing to take it.
In summary, Kevin McHale will probably not
be considered a fool for swapping Mayo for Love in the long run.
Unless OJ ends up being a Top 5 talent in this league, the Wolves will
have ample opportunity to acquire somebody just as talented in 2010,
and managed to improve their overall roster in the process. Is it
necessarily the way I would have done things? Probably not. But I
can’t promise that my plan would have had any better results. With my
plan, the Wolves have a core of Jefferson and Mayo and we swing a deal
using Antoine, our youngsters, and our extra picks to acquire another
solid player. With McHale’s plan we have Jefferson and some nice, but
not amazing pieces, and will hopefully add the other core player in
2010. I don’t see either of the plans getting us anywhere before
2010-11 anyway. I wanted the Wolves to make a right turn and McHale
decided to take three lefts. Until we really see how good Mayo and
Love are, as well as what the Wolves do with their potential cap room,
the there’s no way you can say the Wolves will be any worse off with
either option.
So again, McHale and Hoiberg, you have my
apologies. This wasn’t a bad plan, just a different one from my own.
I’ve gone from elated on Thursday to devastated on Friday to hopeful on
Saturday. There’s no doubt that the Wolves front office have made some
major strides in removing the negatives of the past. I’m going to be
extremely interested to see how well you guys can do adding some
positives.